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Health Care Reform: The Big Business-Big Government Love Affair

In "Big Business Goes For Health-Care Reform"John Stossel yesterday provided evidence from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to demonstrate that big pharmaceutical companies and large health insurance companies support the Democrat health reform bills. He then used a liberal dose of common sense to explain why.

Stossel stated:

“Observe: Although President Obama and big-government activists demonize health-insurance companies, the companies "are still mostly on board with the president's effort to overhaul the U.S. health-care system," the Wall Street Journal reports; and ...

Although the activists criticize Big Pharma, "The drug industry has already contributed millions of dollars to advertising campaigns for the health care overhaul through the advocacy groups like Healthy Economies Now and Families USA. It has spent about $1 million on similar advertisements under its own name," the Times reports.”

He also aptly noted:

“It illustrates economist Steven Horwitz's First law of Political Economy: "No one hates capitalism more than capitalists". In this case, big business wants to shape -- and profit from -- what inevitably will be an interventionist health-care reform. Can you think of the last time a major business supported a truly free market in anything?”

A new coalition on Thursday launched $12 million in television ads to support President Barack Obama’s health reform plan, in the opening wave of a planned tens of millions of dollars this fall.

The new group, funded largely by the pharmaceutical industry, is called Americans for Stable Quality Care. It includes some odd bedfellows: the American Medical Association, FamiliesUSA, the Federation of American Hospitals, PhRMA and SEIU, the service employees’ union.

The decision of labor and progressive groups to join with industry groups could draw new heat about the president’s package from the left.

Generally, when government seeks to achieve a certain economic/fiscal objective, it must disrupt private markets with ham-handed intervention to do so. Achieving the objective usually benefits a concentrated interest composed of a minority of American citizens and harms everyone else.

This is usually the position that assaults free markets and, therefore, is opposed by FreedomWorks. In this case, FreedomWorks is opposed to the efforts of large pharmaceutical companies, massive health insurance companies, unions, and other leftwing groups to pass health care reform to increase the size of government.